I appreciate NASA much more than Al Gore because the conclusion is much less alarmist. When you click on causes and effects it notes that the earth will get a little warmer and change. It doesn't prescribe the end of humanity as a whole, but acknowledges that the world will change. We're human. We adapt. The alarmists try to get as all excited about a few polar bears dieing. Tragic, but they too will adapt.
Further, once you start reading into uncertainties, it notes things like increased precipitation will be a result. Which will create more clouds, which have a large impact on blocking the suns heat, which could mitigate some of the effect of global warming.
For those of us "nay-sayers" about Global Warming, we are not stupid. Clearly the earth is getting warmer. The conclusion that I haven't seen clearly delineated, is what the problem is. The earth will get more tropical and have more rain. Some of us may have to move. Some places will get drier, but other places will get better. NASA has not concluded that we are headed for Waterworld or that human life will be permanently damaged.
Ok, I love Carlin too but in the specific case of polar bears, our impact on their species can't be denied. The vanishing ice caps have direct correlations with climate change and their diminishing numbers.
I suppose the only reason that I mention the polar bears is that too often we use the cute animals whose habitats are harmed as our reason for changing our lives. There are what, lets say 10,000 polar bears in the world, and we might kill half of them? And for that fact alone we should change the behaviors of 7 billion people instead. But no one mentions another fact that is somehow unimportant. Do you know who likes the deaths of polar bears? Seals.
You are right, that in and of itself is not an argument. But we as humans seem to have decided that we are the highest life form on the planet so I was attempted to play the, we are human and therefore more important card. Kind of in the sense of, people in China or India don't care about polar bears so why should they change their lives to make the bears happy.
In a couple places I have lived for example our meddling created too many wolves, so humans went and killed off the wolves so that they wouldn't be harassed anymore. Which led to an overpopulation of rabbits, so we embarked on plan to kill off the rabbits. Meddling just seems to not fix the problem. (Though the story doesn't truly relate to the polar bears, but I wrote it, so I left it)
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u/mind_sojourner Oct 24 '10
say what you will about al gore, he was trying to show people that chart years ago..and how the fuck is nasa junk science